A collection of stories, articles and photos based on my experiences living as an expat in Prague, the city of a hundred spires

Friday, 7 April 2017

Hidden Prague #2 - Kafka's Head

I wasn't entirely sure whether this should be a 'Hidden Prague' post, or merely a 'Prague Landmark'. In the end, I decided on the former because when my neighbour from the UK came to stay with me last month, he spent two hours fruitlessly searching for it to no avail. Eventually I managed to point him in the right direction, and he went home a happy bunny, having seen everything on his list. When I first discovered it, it was only because I'd come out of the shopping mall the wrong way in my early days - and it had only been recently been unveiled, is it wasn't in any of the tourist guides.

Kafka's Head is another David Černý sculpture but on a massive scale. It stands 10.2 metres tall and is made up of 42 independent rotating tiers, held together by a kilometre of cable, driven by a motor and series of relay motors, and weighing in at 39 tonnes.

The whole assembly was erected in late 2014 above Národní třída metro station at the back of the Quadrio shopping mall and business centre (or here on Google maps).

Have a look at the video...(which seems not to show up in Safari. If you can't see the embedded video, trying clicking here)

For more technical information on the sculpture have a look at this page.